Friday, June 26, 2015

Summer Stock Up

Hi friends! I am super excited today to be joining forces with some fabulous TPT sellers to bring you our Summer Stock Up event! This weekend, you will have a chance to browse through tons of teacher-authors' favorite products, check out how they use it in their classroom, and download a free sample! If you fall in love with the product {which I'm sure you will}, you can head over to their TPT store and grab the WHOLE thing! What's a better deal than try it before you buy it?!

Today I have for you one of my absolute FAVORITE products from my store! Better yet... I just completely revamped the whole entire thing {and I literally mean JUST... I just finished!}!!! This product is one of my biggest sanity, time, organization saviors in my classroom, and I created it out of need. In my room, my students rotate through the Daily 5 workstations. I was STUMPED as to what to have my kindergarteners do for Work on Writing. As the year progressed, I knew I would have journals for them to write in and some other fun and authentic writing opportunities, but until then, I had no idea what I would put in a Work on Writing workstation for students who can't yet WRITE!?

After buying and trying countless resources on TPT, most of which I loved, but just didn't EXACTLY fit my needs, I started making things for my own students. A few months later, I decided to compile all of them into one pack to share with other teachers. It is 168 pages FULL of differentiated, common core aligned, and most importantly, meaningful practice for kindergarten and first grade students. Let's take a look, shall we?!

Before we begin, I need to let you know that these activities will save you from constantly making copies and updating activities day after day. I print one copy of each page, and place it in a sheet protector. (You could also laminate it or use one of the dry erase pockets from Lakeshore/Really Good Stuff) My students write directly on the sheet with a dry erase marker. I keep them accountable for their work by having them take a photo of their completed work next to their name tag with the iPad. If you don't have an iPad or camera available to your students, you could have them show you their work quickly between rotations before they erase. This is one of the things I love best about my writing center!

I will just show you a few of my favorite parts of this Work on Writing pack. These spin and trace activities are what I introduce first in our Work on Writing workstation. I add new letters as we learn them in class, and my students have a blast. I think anything with a spinner gets kids excited! My kiddos also love having a choice of what letter they get to work on. Because we use Fundations, I usually add 3 letters at a time.

Our first writing unit is all about writing a list book. These vocab cards are the only thing that I change out monthly. I like to print them, laminate them, and put a magnet on the back (the ones pictured here are from the old version... the new ones have updated clipart and fonts!). Then, I display them on a cookie sheet, and my students can easily take them off and put them back. You could also store them on a binder ring to save space. I like that the vocab cards don't only get used at the beginning of the year for listing; students refer to them all the time when their journals are introduced, and even at other random points during the day. It's like a seasonal word wall... they know exactly where to look when they need to find a word.

This is the newest part of the pack. I wanted my students to have exposure to as many sight words as possible, not just the ones that our district mandates. I took the words from the Dolch pre-primer list, and created these Build a Sentence mats. Students spin (love it!) and use the word that they land on in a sentence. Then, they get to use the checklist to edit their sentence. I also keep some mini voice recorders in the writing center for my students to record their sentence so that they can play it back to themselves when they go to write it.

^(Here's one of my students hard at work in her journal this winter. My mini writing office is pictured here)

What else do my students do during Work on Writing? Check out what's in the whole pack!

Want to try a FREE SAMPLE of this Work on Writing pack? Click on the image below to hop through and grab some amazing FREEBIE samples, including this one!

Like what you see? Click here to buy the whole pack! On sale for 20% off THIS WEEKEND ONLY!